You're Doing It Wrong

Kimberlee gave me some berry starts back at the beginning of summer. I’ve never had great luck with berries but these guys are already going strong. Moments after this photos was taken, I ate them.

I went to the mall today to get my hair cut. What a depressing place. My unscientific estimate is that at least 10% of the place is empty.

Then there are about 30% of stores that sell only completely worthless crap. Stuffed Hello Kitty dolls the size of VWs and lamps with the base shaped like a three foot high wolf. Yikes. And lots of idle clerks.

The worst part is the long row of kiosks that runs down the middle of the mall. People pop out at you with things in their hands and say, “Miss, do you have a moment? I’d like to show you something amazing.” One of the guys was really cute like the long-haired foreign guy that would be the love interest in a romantic comedy. I was severely tempted to see what sort of amazing thing he might like to show me. But I had to hurry to my appointment. My loss, I’m sure.

I let the pumpkin vines out front do what they want although I discourage them from running out in the street. This vine grew over the top of the bush and produced a pumpkin in the middle. I’ve been curious to see what happened and so far the vines keep it from falling to the ground.

Bob and I went to see the Woodstock movie yesterday. I’m afraid we can’t recommend. The minute the lights came up Bob looked at me and said, “I don’t think that worked.” We spent the next hour talking about what went wrong. I don’t know. Cruddy script. Too many loose ends not tied up. Not enough characterization. Not enough plot.

All I could think about the whole time was: Please, someone make Demetri Martin a sandwich. And: “Thank God I’m not there. Crowds. Hippies. Argh.”

This week I’ve been trying to do at least one thing I’ve been procrastinating on each day. On Monday I finally made an eye appointment. I had an eye doctor I loved. The office staff was always pretty lame but the doctor was awesome. Last time I was there they were rude when I phoned, rude when I arrived, the doctor acted as though he’d been interrupted from the most fabulous meal in his life to look at my old eyeballs, then they made me stand there, one of only two people in the reception area, and wait until they begrudgingly took my money. I don’t know what the problem was but I’m not going back.

I found a new eye doctor who is conveniently located and compatible with my new insurance. I’m going to buy about 10 pairs of glasses and put one in every drawer, counter niche, pocket and bag I have. I can never find my glasses plus two of the three operational pairs I have now have been sat-on so many time their arms are bent and one of the nose pads things fell off.

Some other long procrastinated things had to do with visiting retail establishments. It think it’s been pretty well documented here that I hate shopping. I tried for awhile to improve my style but it takes too much time and you have to go to stores and look at things and try them on. Last year during the never-ending winter I realized that I’m a little thin on winter stuff plus over half the pants in my closet are 3 or more years old. So I finally went out into the world to get nice work slacks.

I thought the economy was hurting. I thought America need me to spend my dollars. I was prepared to pay full price. I wasn’t even looking for bargains. Where is all the stuff? I went to 5 stores looking for pants. My infatuation with Ann Taylor is officially over. I’ve never had a great customer service experience downtown although the Loft has usually been okay. Yesterday no one in the store even looked up when I walked in there, one of only two customers in the store. At the Loft they said Hello and then I never saw them again. The selection was doody. Too bad I wasn’t looking for a frilly sleeveless top or dress because they had racks of those on clearance. Those will be worthless in about three weeks.

I love Pendleton but could they please design slacks that don’t look like they were styled for 80 year old ladies. (Um, sorry Priscilla). I liked the pants at J Crew except they were a little lightweight for what I had in mind plus the first pair I tried on was clearly too big but the next size down was about 3 grilled cheese sandwiches away from being too snug. I don’t see how I can so precisely not fit into clothes. The obvious solution would be to buy the too big ones and eat grilled cheese sandwiches until they fit properly.

So I struck out on pants.

Yesterday I went to buy underwear. There were three choices: granny panties, thongs and frilly. Where is the normal underwear? I should clarify the normal underwear that doesn’t cost $15 a pair.

Another thing is I made a hair cut appointment for tomorrow. I cut my hair myself for a long time but then back around the time I wanted to have more style I started getting it highlighted or weaved (wove?) or whatever the term is. At first I enjoyed it but then I got annoyed by how long it took plus it cost a lot of money. So I changed over to regular haircutting and now that seems to take too long and breaks up the entire day. But I ate my last piece of See’s candy yesterday and I need to go to the Mall anyway to restock. Might as well get styled while I’m there.

My last thing that I did today was deal with some retirement account stuff. I always get nervous when I call there because they ask about 50 security questions so I feel like they’re trying to trick me. And then when I put stuff into funds they say things like, “One you do this it can never be changed or undone even if flying monkeys conquer the earth in the next 24 hours and there might be some fees and we will send you a blizzard of emails and snail mails regarding this transaction until you worry that something is wrong. Do you want me to go ahead with the transfer?” Today I said: Go for it.

Possibly my favorite photo of me ever taken: I’m holding Uncle Barry’s hunting pistol which I’ve just used to ruin that chair. I’m wearing my Clarion West t-shirt and you can see my notebook and pen in my pocket. Writing research! I’ve written a couple of stories that concerned guns and I know nothing about them. OR, I knew nothing about them. I got to shoot a bunch of different guns on the trip. It was really fun. My main note was: guns are loud.

We’re back!

And we had a fabulous trip.

Hopefully I’ll write more and post about it later. I have some notes but I can’t find them right now. My entire life seems to consist of things I intend to do later.

Short version: we swam and visited with fun people. We ate lots of stuff. We went for long walks, many of them involving steep hills. We went to parties. Really great trip.

I intended to write a long post about it today but somehow never got around to it. We took today off because it’s our 13 year anniversary.

I intended to post a new wedding photo but I don’t know where the photos are and the scanner is put away. This is the photo I posted at our ten year.

Today we slept in and then went out to breakfast for crepes. I had the Nutella and bananas which was fantastic and also my sugar allowance for about 3 months. I felt fantastic and talked really fast for a couple of hours and then crashed pretty hard. We did our grocery shopping and then in the afternoon I made green sauce using the tomatillo stash from the yard.

I also peeled and sliced up all the cucumbers for a salad I never finished.

This evening we went out to an event with the Vancouver Chamber of Commerce. We walked over there and tried out foods and wines and had a really fun time.

I think I’ve written before that I have some issues with anxiety when I drive. It’s hard to explain. The anxiety doesn’t follow any particular rules and it’s not every time I get in the car. Generally it has to do with unfamiliar places.

Someone suggested GPS and I was telling my mother-in-law this along with a story about going to this place that was way out bumfark Oregon that I didn’t know and trying to find my way home in the dark. She showed up a few days later at the house with a GPS. (Isn’t that thoughtful? She also makes delicious cookies.)

I’m still getting used to it. The first time I took it when I already knew where I was going just to hear how it worked. Then I used it again this weekend when I was truly and completely clueless where to go.

I don’t think GPS is going to save me.

Partly because even though I understand it’s a machine, it still feels like a person. I was first using the lady’s voice. This was when I already knew where I was going. I didn’t like the route she was trying to get me to use and was going my regular way. Every time she said, “recalculating” I felt like she was judging me. And I swear she was getting sort-of shrill, “Turn left, turn left, TURN LEFT.”

“I’m not going that way,” I told her.

I changed it to the Australian man voice so the GPS is now named Hugh (Jackman). This weekend I had to navigate around this major freeway re-paving that cut off the main route to where I was going. There was no way to explain this to Hugh and he kept trying to re-route me back to the place I was avoiding and then after awhile he just shut up, like he was mad that I didn’t follow his suggestions.

And he tells me, “In .3 miles turn left on ramp.” I know fukall what .3 miles is. I need him to tell me, “Get in the left lane right now. Not the far right lane. The outside left lane.” But later he took me down some bizarre back alley and then my destination was right there. So he helped but there was still anxiety.

I’m headed for the hills and will be offline for about a week. Photos of adventures when I return.

I lived in two different houses growing up, both in southern California. We had an ice cream truck in both those neighborhoods. The second neighborhood was deep suburbia.

At the first neighborhood, when I was little, it worked like this: When you heard the music, you had to run and ask your Mom if you could get something. If she said yes you ran out to the curb as fast as you could and stuck your hand out so he would stop. If your Mom said, no, then you’d run out and stand by the truck and hope someone else’s mom took pity on you and got you something. Otherwise you had to watch your friend have an ice cream while you just sat there which seemed tragically unfair at the time.

At the second neighborhood I was already babysitting and had money but was often too cool to stand around buying ice cream from a truck with the babies.

The trucks were like white delivery trucks with a big open window in the side where you’d order your ice cream and the ice cream man would pull them out of freezers built into the truck. The truck had pictures on the side of the different choices. They also had candy. There was this one kind of ice cream that came in a cardboard cone. The ice cream part covered colored plastic stick with an animal that would be revealed when you finished your treat. If you got a white stick you got a free ice cream. It might be you had to get a white lion or something, I can’t remember that part.

When I was in junior high one of my friends was “friends” with the ice cream man and sometimes he would let her ride on the truck. The rest of us were never allowed to ride on the truck due to “insurance” reasons. I remember being kind of envious.

Now I think it’s creepy.

Recently there have been a glut of ice cream trucks in our neighborhood which is walking distance from two mini-marts and a Safeway.

Every time I hear that winky-dinky ice cream truck music I run to the window and look. I’ve never seen anyone stop one of them. Every time it’s a different vehicle. Some of them aren’t even trucks. I saw a beat-up two door something and yesterday a minivan with the driver lighting a cigarette. I saw one that looked like the carts that Portland law enforcement uses except it was painted orange.

I don’t think a minivan should be allowed to be an ice cream truck. Do they just open the back and pull stuff out of a cooler packed with dry ice? Is there a menu? I guess I should have stopped it and found out before doing this post.

Now that I’m a grown up and don’t need to ask my Mom for money, I buy fruit pops at the grocery store. (I like lemon and lime.) And I eat one whenever I want, even at 10am or a half hour before dinner, usually sitting on the back porch in the sun.

On Monday I worked a half day and Bob and I headed out to the Clark County Fair. I’m not sure words can convey just how awesome it was.

What’s a fair without food? The first thing I wanted when I got there was my peach milkshake. We’ve waiting in much longer lines. The advantages of going on a weekday. And still they were doing a brisk business. I can’t imagine what it must be like on Saturday.

After my shake I was full and it was hot so I was worried I wasn’t going to be able to eat anything else. Just what a person should worry about.

Check out the lady wearing the sting dress. I didn’t even notice until just this second. I don’t freak out around bees but the large quantity of bees loitering around the displays eventually made me nervous.

Hi Mr. Bunny! That wire cage looks like an awesome place to spend the day. They have everything at the fair. Tons of bunnies, chickens, sheep, cows. They also had an exotic animal exhibit with tigers and stuff and for the first time in my life I was like, “Where the hell is PETA?”

Look at this guy! He’s bigger than my car.

I really wanted to see some baby pigs and we didn’t see any pigs anywhere except here. And the sign for some sort of pig races. I’m not sure if we just missed them. Maybe Clark County isn’t pig territory. Or maybe swine flu paranoia. I read today that there have been 11 cases of swine flu in the world resistant to Tamiflu and two (2!) were in the state of Washington. Awesome.

I still wanted to see baby pigs and was denied.

One of the top ten foods in the world: fried dough!

The featured program we wanted to see: jousting. I think it was called Knights of the Realm. In the beginning, one of the fair directors came out to tell us all about fair happenings but in the middle the audio died.

So they brought out the Boy Scout color guard and some lady walking through the mud in heels to sing the National Anthem. (Yes, before the jousting, not sure exactly how that works.) Except we couldn’t hear her because no audio and Staind was doing their soundcheck at the amphitheater next door.

Turns out jousting is sort of like baseball or football meaning there’s only a few minutes of action and then lots of filler. But they play a lot of “Lord of the Rings”-like music. The knights were cute and I’ll watch anything with cute knights. It was a fun show but with lots of weird boring parts.

The last thing we watched was the dock dogs which are adorable doggies jumping into a big swimming pool trying to catch things in their mouths.

Other things we ate: baked potato, giant cup filled with fruit (me, obviously), double hamburger with grilled onions, roasted cashews. It was really hot otherwise I would have eaten more things. I wanted fried dough, and a corndog, obviously (hi Shane) and one of those giant fried onion flowers. I could have eaten a lot more.

Someone just tossed these in the trash. And yes, our garbage cans say: Vancouver Sparkles.

I just did a Target run. I bought a bunch of stuff like a purple sports bra and new kitchen dish rags because all of mine smell mildewy and gross.

My wedding anniversary is coming up and I thought I’d get my sweetheart a card. We both buy each other stuff all the time so we don’t really celebrate couple-y events like anniversaries or Valentines by exchanging gifts. But I thought it would be nice to have a card to hand him.

All the anniversary cards at Target were huge tri-fold or multi-fold things with foil or rhinestones or whatever. And they were like $4.50. Not to be cheap but isn’t it ridiculous to pay $4.50 for something that’s going to be opened and then thrown away? For another few bucks I could buy him a CD or a book or a bunch of stuff from the dollar menu at Taco Bell. Do they have a dollar menu at Taco Bell? I haven’t been there since the 90’s.

I didn’t get him a card. I’ll get some construction paper and make him one. Or maybe just write happy anniversary on a piece of scrap paper. Or just say it really sincerely.